ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what Christianity, and then Islam, had to say about peace, and how their messages compared. While the emphasis rests particularly on beliefs, the chapter also looks at practice, for the new religions launched important initiatives toward peace and war during the post-classical centuries from 600 onward. Long before the birth of Christ, the Jewish religion established important commitments toward peace and war that would affect both Christianity and Islam substantially. Extending tensions first developed in Judaism, Islam and Christianity generated legacies that, depending on interpretation and circumstance, could either promote war or sponsor peace. Muslim interest in peace and the successful development and evolution of the Arab Caliphate between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries, a state that at its height controlled the bulk of the Middle East, North Africa and even Spain, combined to yield a prolonged period of peace in the whole region.
